In Europe, prisoners work for real wages and even cook for themselves. And when they leave prison, they don’t come back.

It sounds like the first line of a joke: “Three state cor­rec­tions teams and some ex­perts who are old hands at vis­it­ing pris­ons go to meet their warden coun­ter­parts in Ger­many and the Neth­er­lands in mid-Janu­ary to see what they could learn.”

But it’s a true story — and what high-level del­eg­a­tions from Col­or­ado, Geor­gia, and Pennsylvania learned through the Vera In­sti­tute of Justice’s European-Amer­ic­an Pris­on Pro­ject is no laugh­ing mat­ter. What we learned, in fact, has ser­i­ous and timely boots-on-the-ground im­plic­a­tions.

Twenty years after the 1994 fed­er­al Crime Bill led to an up­surge in pris­on con­struc­tion and pun­it­ive tough-on-crime sen­ten­cing meas­ures, our na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion around crime and pun­ish­ment has shif­ted sig­ni­fic­antly. It is bi­par­tis­an. It is oc­cur­ring in Con­gress and state­houses. En­ergy for re­form is fo­cused primar­ily on re­du­cing sen­tence lengths, nar­row­ing the pop­u­la­tion that goes to pris­on, and bet­ter pre­par­ing those who are leav­ing for re­in­teg­ra­tion.

A new re­port from the Na­tion­al Academy of Sci­ences, The Growth of In­car­cer­a­tion in the United States: Ex­plor­ing Causes and Con­sequences, is an im­port­ant mark­er high­light­ing the pro­found ra­cial and eth­nic di­men­sions of our sys­tem, one in which 34 per­cent of state and fed­er­al pris­on­ers in 2011 were black, though they made up only 13 per­cent of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion in the last census; 22 per­cent were Lati­nos, who com­prised 17 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion. It is a crim­in­al justice sys­tem that per­petu­ates a poverty trap in which black men un­der age 35 who do not fin­ish high school are more likely to be be­hind bars than em­ployed.

In ad­di­tion to re­com­mend­ing policy changes that would lim­it rates of in­car­cer­a­tion, the Na­tion­al Academies re­port also re­com­mends im­prov­ing the ex­per­i­ence of in­car­cer­a­tion and the harms as­so­ci­ated with it — which ex­tend bey­ond bars to the already suf­fer­ing com­munit­ies that pris­on­ers and their fam­il­ies come from.

All of this brings us to an im­port­ant meta-ques­tion taken up by the re­port: what is the role of in­car­cer­a­tion at a time when how we in­car­cer­ate achieves little of what we know works to stop re­offend­ing and cre­ate stronger people and stronger and safer com­munit­ies?

For those of us who vis­ited Ger­many and The Neth­er­lands, the ap­proach to sen­ten­cing and the pris­on philo­sophy we saw as­ton­ished and in­spired us. Not only are far few­er people im­prisoned, but even those who have com­mit­ted ser­i­ous vi­ol­ent crimes serve far short­er sen­tences.

In these European coun­tries, pris­ons are or­gan­ized around the be­lief that, since vir­tu­ally all pris­on­ers will re­turn to their com­munit­ies, it is bet­ter to ap­proach their in­car­cer­a­tion with con­di­tions as close to “nor­mal” as pos­sible—with the ad­di­tion of treat­ment, be­ha­vi­or­al in­ter­ven­tions, skills train­ing, and needed edu­ca­tion — and to re­move them from com­munit­ies for the shortest pos­sible time so that in­sti­tu­tion­al life does not be­come their norm.

In­mates live in rooms and sleep in beds, not on con­crete or steel slabs with thin pad­ding. In­mates have pri­vacy — cor­rec­tion­al of­ficers knock be­fore en­ter­ing — they wear their own clothes, and can dec­or­ate their space as they wish. They cook their own meals, are paid for work that they do, and have op­por­tun­it­ies to vis­it fam­ily, learn skills, and gain edu­ca­tion. In­mates are re­quired to save money to en­sure that they are not pen­ni­less upon re­lease. There are dif­fer­ent ex­pect­a­tions for their cor­rec­tions of­ficers — who are drawn primar­ily from the ranks of law­yers, so­cial work­ers, and men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als — to be part of a “thera­peut­ic cul­ture” between staff and of­fend­ers, and con­sequently re­ceive more train­ing and high­er pay. There is little to no vi­ol­ence — in­clud­ing in com­mun­al kit­chens where there are knives and oth­er “dan­ger­ous” im­ple­ments. And their max­im­um time in any kind of pun­it­ive sol­it­ary is eight hours.

Pris­on policies groun­ded in the be­lief that pris­on­ers should be treated with dig­nity were start­lingly ef­fect­ive — and have em­in­ently prag­mat­ic im­plic­a­tions here at home. The ad­verse so­cial and eco­nom­ic out­comes for former pris­on­ers in the U.S. are severe—and they are con­cen­trated in com­munit­ies that are already strug­gling migh­tily. With 95 per­cent of our na­tion’s in­car­cer­ated in­di­vidu­als even­tu­ally re­turn­ing home from pris­on — and 40 per­cent go­ing right back to pris­on with­in three years — we would do well to heed the strategies used in these na­tions to teach pris­on­ers how to be good and pro­duct­ive cit­izens that can re­build their com­munit­ies.

One can­not be re-so­cial­ized or re­hab­il­it­ated if there is little or no op­por­tun­ity to in­ter­act with the free world, wheth­er through em­ploy­ment, fam­ily en­gage­ment, or study. And if, with­in three dec­ades, we will be a coun­try that is ma­jor­ity people of col­or, isn’t it im­per­at­ive that we do everything in our power to re­duce the per­ni­cious and de­bil­it­at­ing im­pact of our crim­in­al justice sys­tem on the eco­nom­ic agency of the people we will ul­ti­mately rely upon to fuel the na­tion’s eco­nomy?

Can we re-ima­gine Amer­ic­an pris­ons and their use? Yes. Pennsylvania is a sys­tem with some 51,000 in­mates and 16,000 staff that re­flects the ra­cial dis­par­it­ies of the na­tion as a whole (one in every 58 black res­id­ents and one in every 129 Latino res­id­ents are in­car­cer­ated, com­pared to one in every 505 white res­id­ents). We have star­ted to roll out “trans­ition­al units” in each fa­cil­ity for people with­in six months to a year of re­lease, and we are pi­lot­ing some of the nor­mal­iz­a­tion and reentry prac­tices seen in Europe. We are also re-struc­tur­ing our ba­sic train­ing for of­ficers, em­phas­iz­ing com­mu­nic­a­tions skills, mo­tiv­a­tion­al in­ter­view­ing tech­niques, con­flict res­ol­u­tion, and men­tal health first-aid train­ing to be­gin to give of­ficers the tools to be change agents. Vera and Pennsylvania are also work­ing to­geth­er to ef­fect­ively and safely re­duce the use of sol­it­ary con­fine­ment.

Ap­proaches such as these can be im­ple­men­ted and tested in Amer­ic­an pris­ons with a small co­hort of the pop­u­la­tion or test pi­loted at dif­fer­ent se­cur­ity levels. These pi­lots can be tied to in­cent­ive pro­grams or units that may already ex­ist.

Are there chal­lenges to whole­sale re­form? Of course. Money. In­fra­struc­ture. Strains of ra­cial di­vi­sion borne of our his­tory and het­ero­gen­eity. And, cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences es­pe­cially as relates to vi­ol­ence may mean that some European prac­tices may not trans­late smoothly to the U.S. Yet we are at a mo­ment of po­ten­tial for sig­ni­fic­ant shifts. It will re­quire le­gis­la­tion and policy change, in­clud­ing re­think­ing sen­ten­cing for lower of­fenses and re­du­cing the time for those who must be in pris­on. But the no­tion that we should strive to cre­ate an en­vir­on­ment with­in our pris­ons con­du­cive to our goal — to re­turn good cit­izens to our com­munit­ies — is a chal­lenge we can and must meet.

Nich­olas Turn­er is pres­id­ent of the Vera In­sti­tute of Justice, an in­de­pend­ent non­profit cen­ter for justice policy and prac­tice. John Wet­zel is sec­ret­ary of the Pennsylvania De­part­ment of Cor­rec­tions.

"The Senate passed a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill on Tuesday night, handing a significant victory to President Trump and senators who lobbied to advance the legislation before the end of the year. Senators voted 87-12 on the legislation, which merges a House-passed prison reform bill aimed at reducing recidivism with a handful of changes to sentencing laws and mandatory minimum prison sentences." The House aims to vote on the measure when it reconvenes later this week.

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Judge Delays Flynn Sentencing

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Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan "agreed Tuesday to postpone Michael Flynn’s sentencing after a hearing to decide the punishment for President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser went awry." Sullivan gave Flynn a chance to reconsider his decision to plead guilty, adding that he could not "guarantee a sentence without prison time, even after the special counsel’s office recommended that Flynn not be incarcerated. After a brief recess, Sullivan and prosecutors agreed to delay sentencing so that Flynn could "eke out the last modicum of cooperation."